Whenever Guenter Grass was in the communist German Democratic Republic after The Tin Drum came out in 1959, the East German secret police went to great lengths to track his every move.

“Grass was completely surrounded by spies when he came to the GDR. All his official interlucutors were IMs, ‘unofficial employees’ (spies), all of them,” said Schlueter, who went through over 2,000 Stasi files to compile his book.

“Whether they were from writers’ associations, publishers’ representatives, state representatives, theatre people … he was completely surrounded.